Loss

It's funny, because in his 1994 shoot interview during SMW Fan Week, he keeps going on about how there was a mummy in Louisville when he was a kid, and "I love the fucking mummy!"

I thought we learned that just about everything Bruce Pritchard says on this show is a work. Is that incorrect?

He also wore a straitjacket inside a cage at ringside, attacked wrestlers while dressed in drag, wore a mask after he had his head shaved, threw fireballs, hit a woman in the stomach with a tennis racket repeatedly, tarred and feathered a top babyface, wrestled a ninja turtle, poured alcohol down the throat of a sober alcoholic, and ran his own militia. It was more sensationalist than 90% of wrestling today. And it was awesome.

It's rare that Dave disagrees with wrestling personalities in live conversations.

If anyone has ever said 110% or some other variation over 100% when defining an extreme (for example, "I'll give it 110%"), are they breaking the description system? Or are they just being figurative?

The six-star thing was clearly, to me, Dave's way of saying that the Dome match transcended even what he normally sees as a five-star match. To me, what that says is that he gives too many matches five stars, but you only live once, and the ratings are his, not mine. It was a five-star match and this is a five-star match for ratings purposes. It's a poorly thought out way to phrase how great he thinks this series is, but I do think it was meant to be figurative.

I think it's important to note that WWE cares far more about appealing to shareholders than appealing to their fanbase at this point, and I'm not even sure that's the wrong decision. I don't like it, but it's probably justifiable in some form if the idea is to create a model that is far more sustainable and steady than pro wrestling has ever really been. Part of what WWE is selling to shareholders and television executives is the type of fans they draw. In the past, it always hurt them that they drew from every age group instead of delivering strongly in one or two specific demographics. It's always hurt them that wrestling fans typically aren't higher education or upper income. I think it's time to revisit that idea, though. Their audience is smaller, yes, but their audience is willing to spend a ton of money and watch a ton of content. On the money front, lower middle class families scraping by aren't exactly going to fly to WWE's Big 3 shows each year. That suggests that even as the audience has shrunk, the type of fan who watches has skewed more educated with more disposable income. And for what WWE is going for, that's not at all a bad thing. I don't like it. As a fan, I think the worst thing that ever happened to wrestling was diversified revenue streams, instead of having to live and die by the PPV/live gate numbers. But stepping outside of my own feelings on it, it's hard to deny that it has worked.

What's wrong with me that I couldn't motivate myself to watch this match? Pretty great. CIMA and Fuji (especially CIMA) prove they belong on the big stage, getting a chance to strut their stuff in what was probably to that point the largest audience of their careers with some of the greatest juniors in history. I'm with Chad that Otani in Toryumon would have been golden, although I think Takaiwa might have been an even better fit. Those chop battles were crazy and I loved the dive sequence at the end. This would have been better in a more welcoming, hardcore environment like Korakuen, but it absolutely worked here. ****

I agree that's a more stable model. But I also think wrestling was only cyclical in the old days because promoters never knew when to stop going with a pat hand. It's Vince's loss -- if he's content making less money to preserve greater power over his labor, so be it.

WWE would be less handcuffed if they returned to the business of creating megastars instead of making the brand the draw. Mediums are niche, yes, but stars are still stars and cults are still driven by personality.

A *** match is good and worth seeing and Beyoncé proves superstars that are household names, make headlines, and have crossover appeal can still exist.

Someone might say to both critique wrestling while not wrestling and to call people chickenhawks in foreign policy discussions is hypocritical. But that's probably a MIS question.

It's probably worth noting that most younger wrestlers seem to have broken from a lot of this stuff. Ricochet was very polite and reasonable when responding to criticisms of his Ospreay match last year, for example.

The idea that you have to physically and mentally torture new wrestlers as a drill exercise to prepare for possible fan riots.

This may end up the match where we are farthest apart. I thought this came across like a bad ECW fancam match that would never end, with an excessive finishing stretch tacked on to the end. I actually feel guilty when I don't like matches in this project, especially those otherwise praised, but this was a bunch of dumb table spots with no heat, then a finishing stretch with no heat. And when you're relying on whatever melodrama they were going for with Shinzaki and all the nearfalls, you sort of need that for it to click.

It's a bit pathetic how much better Fuyuki is than Kuroda in this match. The gulf is huge. Fuyuki is so past his peak years and so broken down, but still so good, making this a very good, intense match even when Kuroda tries working comedy spots with underwear in the middle of a heated bloodbath. I think he has it in him to be much better than he is, but he makes such puzzling match choices. ***1/2

Both are from the old school and are probably willing to just kayfabe it.

This was wonderfully violent with a few moments that really took me by surprise. Sabu was on top of his game here, but I think the biggest reason this worked was that Gannosuke was worlds better than his usual opposition. I wouldn't go as far to say he carried this, but I would say that he understood how to pace the match in a way where there wasn't much extended setup time. I also liked that this was a rare case of Sabu getting just as well as he gave, between the Fire Thunder Driver through the table and the receipt fireball, which totally caught me off guard. You could probably draw a straight line from All Japan's famous 1977 tag league match to this and in the process watch the growth of garbage style. ***1/2

I really didn't enjoy how much time they had to take setting up all the spots, but the sloppiness I thought added to the desperate and chaotic nature of the match. This really did feel like a true street brawl (an exaggerated one, of course) that had gotten way out of hand with guys using everything they could get their hands on to attack each other. There was a level of intensity usually missing from these plunder-heavy hardcore brawls. I loved the light fixture thing -- felt like a Wrestling MacGyver moment. I was very into this one. ***1/2

Lawler fawning over how smart Vince is for knowing Richmond is the capital of Virginia is hilarious. The match itself is nothing you haven't seen before as far as Attitude Era stuff, but the booking is fantastic in making so many guys major players and in using Hebner's hometown status to put heat on the heels. As a match, this isn't much, but this is a booking masterpiece, managing to get Rock over as the Walking Tall babyface, put more heat on HHH and his crew, keep the Jericho push going, reintroduce Rikishi to the top mix and finalize the babyface turns of Big Show and the Dudleys. ***, every bit of it for the booking.

Another stiff Benoit-Jericho match. In some ways, this series was unnecessarily stiff at times, but I think that because of their size, they were trying to get over as tough guys since they were trying to hang with Rock and HHH on top. They made terrific use of the time here and the end result was a very good sprint and an effective title change. Benoit's bloody nose created a memorable visual. ***1/4